Unspoiled

I've spent the last couple of weeks on the Atlantic coast of central Florida, soaking up the sun (once it loses its flame-grilling edge each day), dodging mosquitoes (grade A for effort, C- for achievement) and enjoying a side of perhaps the world's most cliched holiday destination that I wish more people knew about. Though I kind of don't too, since then it might not be so enjoyable.

Playa Linda beach, near Cape Canaveral, virtually deserted, skies dusted with fleecy clouds, water so warm it feels the same as the air as you slide in.

The back roads in the salt marshes around Oak Hill, a thousand different types of palm tree silhouetted against a saturated sunset, birds of prey wheeling towards the coast.

Eating grits and personalised fried eggs in diners that haven't changed since the 50s. The Moonlight Drive-in in Titusville, where the waitresses roller-skate your malts out to the car window.

Armadillos on the roadsides, barely distinguishable from blown-out tyre fragments. Pretty little snakes, which I should be more scared of. Lucille, the three-foot alligator in the pond in front of our mobile.

Homemade burgers and white corn with Clarke, the Vietnam vet, chain-smoking to The End by the Doors with his pet fish under a patched-together corrugated iron pavilion.

The scents of sulphur, white flowers, burning blacktop, insect repellent, salt and swamp.

I don't miss home just yet.